Sonja Stuchtey started her career as a business consultant at Booz Allen before founding SCIENCE LAB, an education platform, and Alliance for Europe, a civil tech company. She’s acted as a director in the business consultancy AlixPartners and – focusing on enterprise improvement and innovation – she’s part of the Capitals Coalition supervisory Board and the HeadBox Advisory Board.
Sonja received her PhD from the Technical University of Munich for empirical education research. She’s Founder of nature fintech company The Landbanking Group, which fosters the idea of land stewardship.
In our latest post, Sonja explores the challenges of prioritising environmental sustainability in current investment practices. As the climate crisis looms, Sonja argues, responsible investment has never been more crucial; companies must transition from exploitative practices to regenerative ones.
Sonja explains how her work with The Landbanking Group helps investors and organisations adopt a fundamental shift, from viewing environmental investment as something to be minimised to recognising natural capital as a vital asset:
I’ve been in this field for 30 years, though it wasn’t called ESG at the time. My focus has always been on addressing the most pressing challenges businesses and societies face. My journey began with my second startup in the social space, which aimed to scale and improve early STEM education.
From there, I moved into governance – the ‘G’ in ESG – by founding a civic tech startup focused on social listening and monitoring misinformation on social media. More recently, I’ve entered the environmental sector, the ‘E’ in ESG, through our work at The Landbanking Group.
There are many urgent challenges, but one in particular caught my attention: leveraging technology to drive land transformation toward more regenerative practices. With the right technology, we can make informed, data-driven decisions about land use management. This ensures long-term sustainability –and ensures prosperity – benefiting both the environment and future generations.
Regenerative agricultural practices are essential for restoring soil health and ensuring food security.
Ecology – especially when you consider entire ecosystems rather than just human-driven interactions with nature – is incredibly fascinating. Our goal is to establish nature as an asset class by creating transactional contracts based on ecological health. However, investors often found this very ambitious and asked us to narrow our focus to a single metric, such as carbon measurement. We explained that nature’s health is interdependent; we must consider not only carbon but also water, biodiversity, and soil health.
To make biophysical improvements investable, we needed to integrate this approach into financial markets in a way that investors could appreciate. Hence, we have to connect two disparate fields: ecosystems that obey the laws of nature and thrive in balance – and finance which is set up for continuous growth. Building a bridge between the two is our challenge. It requires us to embrace both in their entirety.
We’re experiencing a rollback in this sector. Unfortunately, we have yet to fully recognise the natural environment and ecosystems – on which our prosperity depends – as critical infrastructure. Instead, environmental concerns have often been treated as trends that come and go – like in a hype cycle.
About two years ago, environmental discussions were at a peak, but we’re now in a deep trough. The current U.S. administration has largely dismissed environmental issues, attempting to revert to outdated economic practices reminiscent of the 1960s. This demonstrates a failure to acknowledge that environmental sustainability is fundamental to economic stability rather than a passing trend.
The main challenge is shifting the perception of environmental sustainability from a marketing trend to an essential infrastructure. This perspective has driven the development of our technology over the past three years. Thriving ecosystems enable business continuity and prosperity, so we must understand, measure, and monitor them effectively.
Once we grasp the risks and opportunities associated with ecosystems, we can mitigate those risks and invest in opportunities.
This understanding led us to create Landler: a technology solution and management platform that facilitates both comprehension and investment transactions at scale. Our approach is unique in its ability to analyse plot-level data, leveraging AI, advances in remote sensing and increased monitoring frequency.
Thanks to these technological advancements, we can now assess ecological and ecosystem health at the hectare level over time. This enables businesses to manage natural assets just as they would any other critical component of their operations.
One of the most pressing ecological issues is the overuse and depletion of ecosystems. We’re increasingly hearing about the loss of biodiversity and the lack of water; there is less focus on soil. For decades, we’ve used pesticides and fertilisers to maximise yields, but this has come at the cost of degrading soil health. The delicate balance within soil ecosystems has been disrupted, leading to predictions that up to 95% of the planet’s soil could become infertile by 2050. If this happens, largescale food production will become impossible, pushing us toward a global food crisis.
Surprisingly, despite the alarming findings of recent studies, the issue has not received the urgent attention it deserves. People remain focused on other concerns while an impending food crisis looms. If we don’t change our approach to land use, we risk longterm agricultural collapse.
To address this, we must allow soil to regenerate. Soil is more than a medium for plant growth; it provides essential nutrients and sustains biological processes critical for fertility. Regenerative agricultural practices are essential for restoring soil health and ensuring food security.
This shift is crucial for businesses as well. Any company that depends on land-based resources must transition from exploitative practices to regenerative ones. Our solution, Landler, facilitates this shift by leveraging remote sensing and high-frequency monitoring. With hectare-level insights, we can track ecological health over time, allowing businesses to manage soil, water, biodiversity as a vital asset for their long-term success.
One of the biggest barriers to ecological transition is the lack of funding. Many land users, especially smallholder farmers, can’t afford to shift to regenerative practices. Around two-thirds of their costs go toward fertilisers and pesticides, ensuring short-term yields but degrading long-term soil health. Transitioning to sustainable methods would eventually reduce costs, but initially leads to lower yields for several years as the soil recovers.
With approximately 600 million smallholder farmers worldwide, most lack the financial means to make this transition. The same issue applies to forestry, particularly in restoring biodiverse forests rather than maintaining monocultures.
Our solution facilitates a contract between willing investors and farmers based on measurable ecological outcomes. A farmer commits to regenerative practices, resulting in improved carbon storage, water retention, and biodiversity. Investors can track these improvements over time using Landler’s platform. As the farmer successfully transitions their land to sustainable practices, investors receive measurable ecological assets and gain access to healthier, more resilient harvests in the future.
This approach allows investors to secure the future health and resilience of their supply chains. By investing in ecosystem regeneration, they’re not just financing sustainability – they’re ensuring the long-term viability of the very resources their businesses depend on.
One example comes from the construction sector. A company building a new industrial site for cement production used Landler to assess the natural capital of its location and surrounding landscape. They discovered that while their site had minimal flood risk, rising temperatures due to climate change would make summer production increasingly difficult within the next ten to twenty-five years.
Recognising this long-term risk, they began reconsidering their site design. Instead of conventional approaches that prioritise quick water drainage, they implemented measures to retain water on-site, leveraging its natural cooling effect. They also integrated more biomass around the facility to reduce surface temperatures.
Additionally, they identified a neighbouring forest as a valuable asset for cooling during the summer. Rather than purchasing the land outright, they invested in its preservation by compensating local land stewards to maintain the forest. This provided a tangible benefit: reduced heat exposure, leading to lower cooling costs and improved working conditions.
This case illustrates how Landler enables companies to make datadriven decisions that enhance both environmental sustainability and business resilience. By managing natural assets strategically, businesses can mitigate risks, lower operational costs, and ensure longterm viability.
A key breakthrough has been the advancements in remote sensing and satellite data. The frequency, resolution, and variety of data we now receive allow us to construct a detailed history of a site. Additionally, progress in AI enables us to process vast amounts of information, triangulating in-situ data to make sense of site-specific ecological changes at a granular level. We use machine learning and deep learning models to analyse bioacoustics, images, remote sensing data, thermal data, and radar data.
AI also helps us integrate multiple data layers, allowing us to understand the complex interdependencies between biological, atmospheric, and soilrelated factors that influence land integrity.
Our mission is to redefine nature as critical infrastructure and a source of wealth. If we succeed, we can fundamentally change how we value and interact with the natural world. Instead of viewing nature as an external cost, we must recognise it as our most essential value driver – one that appreciates as we invest in it. The greatest potential impact is fostering a new relationship with nature that prioritises regeneration and long-term sustainability.
I want to emphasise that we are in a groundbreaking space, tackling a well-known problem in an unprecedented way. We need the best minds – visionary technologists, AI experts, and problem-solvers – to help build this solution.
I’m eager to hear from people with ideas, passion, and expertise who want to contribute innovative solutions, or join us on this journey.
Historically, investing in nature was seen as an external cost recorded in P&L statements – something to be minimised. This approach is fundamentally flawed because it fails to acknowledge that natural resources are critical assets. We have been cutting down the very tree we are sitting on.
We need to shift our perspective and recognise natural capital as an investment. Our approach has enabled companies to capitalise on their investments in nature as intangible assets. We already have examples of companies successfully recording these investments on their balance sheets.
This shift is crucial, particularly for industries dependent on long-term environmental health. In sectors like coffee, cocoa, and citrus, declining ecosystem health threatens future harvests. Recognising nature as an asset ensures sustainable production and long-term economic viability.
Unfortunately, we’re witnessing accelerating climate change, increasing ecological depletion, and worsening food security. This will have profound effects on urban environments and industrial activities. I foresee a shift from a compliance-driven market to one focused on risk and opportunity management.
Discussions around ESG have often centred on CO2 certificates and carbon footprints, focusing on guilt and compliance. However, I believe the conversation will pivot towards assessing risks and seizing opportunities. Companies that take the lead in this transition will be best positioned to navigate the inevitable wave of asset devaluation and impairment in the coming years.
At the Landbanking Group, we take a different approach compared to many tech companies. While we use agile methods, we have deliberately moved away from traditional topdown organisational structures. Instead, we operate in specialised circles that cover key areas such as tech, science, marketing, sales, and projects.
Rather than relying on a strict hierarchy, we encourage shared responsibility for the company’s success. It’s not about making every decision democratically, but ensuring team members take full ownership of their roles, while contributing beyond their immediate responsibilities.
Managing these interconnected circles can be challenging due to the rapid pace of development, but the benefits are immense. This structure fosters an incredible density of ideas and skills, allowing each team member to leverage their expertise while engaging in broader company objectives.
I faced resistance – particularly from more senior colleagues who were accustomed to traditional hierarchies. However, given the complexity of the challenges we address, I’m grateful that we pushed forward with this model. We can’t afford to rely on just a few decision-makers when solving such multifaceted problems. Every mind in our team plays a crucial role in driving solutions forward.
The key difference is that we don’t have traditional department heads. Instead, we distribute responsibilities based on skills rather than rank or tenure.
For example, in our science circle, one team member might oversee the overarching scientific strategy, while another manages budget details. Instead of assuming that the most senior scientist should handle all aspects, we assign tasks based on who’s best suited for each role.
This approach ensures that expertise is leveraged effectively while maintaining flexibility. Rather than adhering to rigid structures, we allow team members to contribute in ways that align with their strengths, leading to a more dynamic and adaptive organisation.
There were actually no major surprises. Maybe because this is my fourth startup, I knew it would be challenging. You have to be a little crazy and fully committed to your technology and business model.
Many of the initial hurdles we faced have faded as the world evolved in the direction we anticipated. I wouldn’t have done anything differently. Our team is fantastic: dedicated, innovative, and a joy to work with. We also have an incredible group of investors who are fully committed for the long term, which makes a huge difference.
